MLB's historic game in Cuba will be played in a stadium that was confiscated by the government from a Cuban family

The
Rays will play the Cuban National team in Estadio
Latinoamericano.ESPN

The Tampa Bay Rays will play what is being billed as "a historic
game" on Tuesday when they will be the first MLB team since 1999
to play in Cuba.

The game will be played in front of more than 50,000 fans that
will include President Barack Obama and Derek Jeter. While many
hope the game is something that can help usher the two
countries into a new era of openness, others are skeptical as
there is still distrust from many Cuban-Americans and there are
too many reminders of the times they endured.

One of those reminders is the very stadium in which the Rays will
face the Cuban National Team, Estadio
Latinoamericano.

Estadio Latinoamericano used to be called Gran Estadio
de La Habana, or The Great Stadium, when it was owned by Bobby
Maduro. He paid $1.8 million in 1946 ($22 million in today's
dollars), according to ESPN, to build the stadium to
house the Havana Sugar Kings, which would eventually become the
Cincinnati Reds' triple-A club.

It had been the dream of Madura to have the Sugar Kings
become an MLB franchise. However, when tensions rose in Cuba in
1960, Maduro was forced to move his team to New Jersey and the
Cuban government confiscated the stadium, the same government
that is still in power today.

Another loss. That's what this already feels like to so
much of Miami, before the “historic” baseball game has even been
played. As if the Cubans who fled to this country haven't already
felt enough of those losses over the decades. Lost childhoods.
Lost roots. Lost families. Lost land. Lost freedoms. Lost lives
in the ocean that divides Cuba and America like the million miles
of distance between desperation and hope.

So much happy coverage on the television this week.
Historic visit! America and Baseball celebrating
themselves. Obama and Jeter and ESPN head toward
communism like it is another cruise port, so many symbols of
Americana descending on a rotting island stuck in the 1950s, and
it doesn't feel quite right back in Miami, like watching a
funeral morph into a party. The history of my own people feels
like it is either being ignored or trampled here, and I'm not
quite sure which of those feels worse.

Maybe the baseball game will have a lasting, positive
impact. But for many, the pain is still too real, and the stadium
is just another reminder of that pain for some.